Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @02:10AM
from the you-give-and-they-take dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Exploiting Florida's liberal public-records laws and Google's search algorithms, a handful of entrepreneurs are making real money by publicly shaming people who've run afoul of Florida law. Florida.arrests.org, the biggest player, now hosts more than 4 million mugs. On the other side of the equation are firms like RemoveSlander, RemoveArrest.com and others that sometimes charge hundreds of dollars to get a mugshot removed. On the surface, the mug-shot sites and the reputation firms are mortal enemies. But behind the scenes, they have a symbiotic relationship that wrings cash out of the people exposed."

The pictures are scraped from half a dozen sheriff websites from around the state. They will remain there, but.....

The point is these guys do all the SEO optimization they can, so when you do a search for your name, it comes up. For example, if you do a Google search for phantomfive, this is what you find [arrests.org]. (ok, that's a joke).

For some people, that website actually comes up. And they don't want their mugshot to be in the first 10 search results for their name. So they pay, in some cases, over $1000 to get it removed. Ouch.

That's such a good idea, Google is now not responding to the search request in that other post. Yes, it appears that we've slashdotted Google. I think that says a lot about just how much the Slashdot crowd disagrees with this business model.

Their own fault? Innocent people get arrested all the time. Some innocent people even get convicted. But a lot of arrests never end up going to trial because they are released because the arrest was bogus.

Guess what, by far most innocent people never get arrested at all, ever. In fact, many people who are guilt of a crime never get arrested at all. Your real complaint isn't that people are getting arrested and set free, but that the public has been taught that "arrest == guilty until proven innocent".

Is that supposed to make someone feel better if they happen to be one of the unlucky ones?

That's true, but large swaths of the population are also willing to believe the worst of others based on rumors.An employer doing a Google search on an applicant's name and seeing a mug shot pop up probably won't bother looking any further, and will stick that application in the recycle bin. And that's just one example.I see it as a way of punishing people who haven't even been convicted. In my mind, mug shots should be restricted to law-enforcement only until/unless the accused is convicted. If charges are

As far as I'm concerned, this should be illegal. There are plenty of pieces of information that can be obtained via Google which are not supposed to be considered when evaluating an applicant due to equal opportunity laws. These, I believe, are illegal to put on an application or ask during an interview. So it should also be illegal to try and find that information out on your own.

After a job has been offered to the applicant, now this information can be obtained along with drug testing (I don't agree but

Most Americans (despite the alleged goals of our legal system) are more concerned with permanently branding someone as Something Bad (sex offender, convict, etc), so that we can then exclude them from doing anything which Normal Polite Society can do. You know, like have a job, pick their kids up at school, live within X meters of anyone under the age of Y, etc. VERY few people truly subscribe to a notion of forgiveness or rehabilitation, and instead are inclined to believe that it's safer to stay the hel

Depends on the wording of the agreement, I think... If they say that they'll get it off of those sites permanently, then you may be able to get them for breech of contract (I'm not a lawyer, obviously).

Also, it makes financial sense to play it somewhat straight. If people's mugshots keep popping up, people will start to catch on that paying them does nothing but empty your bank account, and you'll STILL have that picture up there. That will get around, and they will lose "customers" (for lack of a better te

Other sites do the same more locally: in Alachua County, home to Gainesville and the University of Florida, the local newspaper runs a mugshot site at http://www.mugshotsgainesville.com/ [mugshotsgainesville.com]

From their site:

... Mug shots are presented chronologically, by booking time and date. Records will remain online for a maximum of 90 days.

I don't know if they collaborate with any sort of removeslander.com or removearrest.com sites, but I imagine the lucrative possibilities of collaboration might be tempting to a local news agency strapped for cash.

Somehow, I reckon they are not. Otherwise, why would they announce a 90 days maximum for public availability?

Do you really think that those extortionate sites would dare to bother such hard core criminals? Just scan your Rotary membership card, and email it to the site admin, and your mugshot will be gone in no time!

If one has a reputation to protect, perhaps one should not be doing things that will get one arrested, such as possessing illegal substances or soliciting prostitutes.
If the person cared about his reputation, he would be thinking more about his actions. Why should the government care more about the reputation of a person than the person himself?

People get arrested for things that aren't even illegal. How many recent stories have we seen about people being arrested for recording a video of a cop?

I'm surprised this isn't more common. Arrest records are public in many states, and it takes just one enterprising person to expose all that information for the masses, and/or charge to get your data out of the system. Florida must make it easier to get mugshots than other places, though - typically police here in California only release those when there's a public issue of some sort.

For those interested, all sorts of information is public like this, but not always easy to get a hold of, depending on where you live. Such data includes mortgage records, liens, voter registration data, Social Security death records, civil and criminal case filings (and most other court-related information), some utility records, professional licenses, and other tidbits. It's good to know what's out there and who can easily access it - better than hiding and pretending it's not there, at least.

Simplest way to put activity like this is to choke the flow by charging for access to each individual record. Millions of records suddenly costs tens of millions of dollars, making this kind of activity economically unattractive.

The kid broke into a baseball field concession stand and stole a bunch of candy. [abc-7.com] Cops found a lot of candy and soda at their treehouse. Two other kids face felony charges for their role in stealing candy.

Yes, but the point is they shouldn't be. Arrest is no indicator of guilt, just as lack of arrest is no indicator of innocence. Releasing the record of a wrongful arrest is character assassination and indeed could be a powerful weapon in the hands of a corrupt official. What I would suggest is that we lobby our state legislatures to keep arrest records sealed until an indictment (or guilty plea) is recorded. It's quite outrageous to see the presumption of innocence

I disagree. It's important that the public are able to see who is being arrested, to keep the police accountable. If you can look at arrest records and conviction records, then you can see (for example), if the police are arresting a lot more people of a particular minority group than they are convicting. The problem is not releasing arrest records, it's the assumption that arrest equals guilt. The released arrest records should have to contain details of whether the person was convicted, and if they were not then stripping this information from the record and presenting it in a way that implies that the arrested person is a criminal should count as libel.

I disagree. It's important that the public are able to see who is being arrested, to keep the police accountable.

Mod parent up. This is an excellent point; my comment was not that well thought out.

Bollocks, you do not need everyonein the world to know details of every arrest in order to keep the police accountable. You just need a proper complaints/police review system. They're the ones who should be officially monitoring police arrest statistics, not some drunken blogger who thinks he's being a citizen journalist by printing pictures of prostitutes.

Most scandinavian countries have strict rules about privacy of individuals, although criminal records are freely searchable by those with a need to know. Really any need to know is fine, but if it is determined later that you lied, you are in big trouble.

Seems alright. "Applying for a job" is sufficient need to know. So is a press pass. You get access.

"Scraping 10 million records" is not. You get a fine and are liable in civil court for breach of privacy.

You are not entirely correct about the details. Getting the information is not illegal, but publishing it is. You may not publish a database online containing personally identifiable information. The mugshot database in the article would definitely classify and would carry a hefty fine. Still, there are ways to get around the law, for example there are multiple sites around here that let people see how much their neighbours earn because tax records are public. I don't think that the law is the problem and i

Privacy and freedom of information are two sides of the same coin. The idea is that the people need to be defended from oppressive states and that the people need to have power over oppressive states. State information should be freely available. People's information should only be available when it can be clearly proven that it is the states information.

What is wrong here is that the data of innocent people should be theirs to control. The state and the sites republishing should be 100% liable for any even potential reputation damage of leaking the data of such people.

The second thing which is wrong is the vindictiveness of US justice. There needs to be a clear period after which minor crimes are forgiven and there is no effective difference between that person and an innocent person. Unfortunately the US uses bad tools like plea bargains which mean it is impossible to differentiate the evil guilty who got away with a good deal from the people who thought they would be declared innocent and chose to fight.

Not really in this case, say five or ten dollars per complete record accessed with a token membership fee. Someone has to pay for the cost of keeping and distributing those records, why not make it those privacy invasive people who choose to download all of them.

These are arrest records, the problem is that in the US a person's reputation is toast well before the trial begins. Good luck repairing your reputation if you're ever arrested for possession of child porn even if the evidence is complete bunk and you're acquitted you might never recover your good name as chances are the press will have spread it all over the country by the time the trial actually occurs.

Sometimes there does need to be some restrictions on the press because the press isn't always capable of

They'll either get sued out of existence, someone will discover that what they're doing is illegal (or will be made illegal) and they'll be shut down, or someone will find them and beat the living shit out of them and/or burn them to the ground. One way or another, don't think they'll be around long.

Under current laws, it's not going to happen. It's not illegal to disseminate information that's part of the public record. What are you going to sue for? Defamation of character? You did get arrested. Libel? Posting a mug shot that was taken by Law Enforcement is hardly slanderous, after all, you *DID* get arrested. Expecting one aspect of the justice system to essentially rule against another aspect is just the height of ignorance and optimism.

This website is available in the UK. Sue in London. Problem solved. (But do it quick, before Parliament fixes the law.)

You know, having had a few minutes to think about it, here's what's really wrong with what you're saying: You're posting as Anonymous Coward. Tell you what, asswipe: Post a photo of your driver's license, so all other Slashdotters who care to do so can dig up every little thing from your past and slather the internet with all of it, including their opinions concerning said past. Then I'll take anything you have to say seriously. What's that? No way, you say? That's what I thought.

my favourite part is how they are intentionally trying to piss-off/harass criminals. sure not all of them will be for serious crimes and i assume just because you had a mug shot taken doesn't necessarily mean you were convicted... but still, there's gotta be some nut-jobs in that mix and i'm sure some of them know how to either:

These images may be a matter of public record, but isn't the tosser in breach of copyright by scraping them and putting them up on his website along with the other details? Is he just hotlinking? Who actually holds the copyright on those mugshots? Does he actually get them removed from the original Sheriff's website or does he just flag it in his database to not push it in google? So many questions not answered in the original article...

It's one thing if my picture/address/whatever is available on the internet. It's a different thing if this information is taken and widely advertised on said internet without my consent or combined with demands that I have to pay money for the involved company not to do this.

Well, I wouldn't be happy if anyone would take my telephone number, no matter if available publicly or not, and distribute it at will. The pure existence of public information doesn't really justify free re-usage in my opinion.

And I already live in a country that doesn't do stuff like this. I just couldn't believe that such a practice is indeed legal.

Really, if you don't want the fact you were arrested to be public record, move to a country where arrests are not public record and people may just disappear in the night and be held for months or years without charge.

Yes, here in the UK and indeed most of Europe, we have traded the freedom of laughing at people's drunk mugshots for the convenieince of being whisked away in the middle of the night.

Most days when you get to work, yet another colleague has mysteriously vanished, only for their tortured body to appear by the side of a railway line a few months later.

Hilarious. That site is dedicated solely to removing your mugshot from florida.arrest.org and the google search index, and all RemoveSlander does is pay the site $28 to remove both through an automated link. So the slander site brings in like $678 just to click a button. That's pretty good.

Because people are stupid beyond belief. If they weren't this whole scam would be a non-starter. Anyone capable of thinking their way out of a paper bag knows that a mug shot on a site like this is completely meaningless, so only idiots are going to pay any attention to them. Someone that stupid will ALSO believe that the lack of a mug shot on a site like this means something, although I'm not sure what: it's really really hard to think like a stupid person.

If we care enough about this, we should all follow the example of the Freedom March... everyone should join, and supply "I am Sparticus" mugshots. Providing false data creates inflation in the data security industry. You can do more damage to an economy with counterfeiting than you can by burning currency. My problem is, why do I care? If I accept that the people getting mugshots are drunk drivers etc., I am not motivated to "march" for them.

His year-old business has earned him enemies. Wiggen said he receives about 100 angry e-mails, and a few snail-mail letters, every day from people whose booking photos are displayed on his site. “Obviously, they’re really nasty,” he said of the messages. “I never thought I’d get this backlash from individuals. I just never imagined it.”

He's not an evil bastard, he has a mental disorder. Every time this guy's brain boots up, it throws "module empathy not found."

When a mentally ill person stabs a traffic cop because they thought he was the devil we put them in an institution, but when they think people have no feelings and use them as cattle or disposable cogs we can't give them our money fast enough.

The police sites that these mugshots come from should require a CAPTCHA when browsing begins and before accessing any individual record. Ideally, names on the list should be translated to images, not CAPTCHA-style, but the cost of OCR'ing the page will be high. Allow a search so that people can still find records easily - but require a CAPTCHA for that as well. Unless the CAPTCHA it's cracked, it will shut down these mugshot sites overnight. They could try implementing this interface only when a crawler is

is that Rob Wiggen continue this service for a very short while. once you've destroyed someones relationship, their job, and their social life by flagrantly parading their past transgressions, some very painful, You have created someone who is determined with nothing more to lose.

you;ve also created someone who values your fingers toes and teeth far less than you.

Desperate to get off the site, Cabibi quickly found an apparent ally: RemoveSlander.com. “You are not a criminal,” the website said reassuringly. “End this humiliating ordeal Bail out of Google. We can delete the mug-shot photo.”

Well, the best reaction would have been: contact the other mug-shots and start a " Block florida.arrests.org" campaign on Google. If there are enough of them, the florida.arrests.org will sunk into the oblivion.

Hey, should the/.-ers help? Like: log into your gmail account, do a search after "Florida mugshots" [google.com] and use the "Block... " feature?

Aww... c'mon guys, let's see how fast we can pull the carpet under the feet of the computer-savvy Florida ex-con named Rob Wiggen. I just did it, also blocking from my results the www.mugshots.com, mugshotsusa.com and a bunch of others (we should stop only when the real public records will get onto the first page).

Uhhh..where the hell is the block button of which you speak? Because I tried in both Dragon and FF 5 and in both cases all I get is a choice of the link or the Google cache.

As for TFA, how is this not blackmail? It seems like a textbook definition to me. I just don't see how they aren't adding their own mugshot to the list with a stunt THIS brazen. After all this isn't like some neighborhood watch website where they are informing people there may be someone dangerous in their midst, no these guys set thi

As for TFA, how is this not blackmail? It seems like a textbook definition to me. I just don't see how they aren't adding their own mugshot to the list with a stunt THIS brazen. After all this isn't like some neighborhood watch website where they are informing people there may be someone dangerous in their midst, no these guys set this thing up to get paid to make it go away. But then again I thought Yelp should have been busted for their "make bad reviews go bye bye, just shell out $$$" stunt.

The information is all ready public it can not be blackmail all this guy did was make it easier to find. Only people who were charged and not convicted could make any reasonable claim that this is blackmail.

Hey, should the/.-ers help? Like: log into your gmail account, do a search after "Florida mugshots" and use the "Block... " feature?

I don't have a block feature any more, where did it go? I found it exciting until it vanished. ARGH, and fucking google turned safesearch on AGAIN. When I click on "manage blocked sites" in preferences I simply return to search/search results. Okay, shift-reloading the preferences page made that link work. But the block feature is still gone. Has this happened to anyone else? It also says I only blocked one domain but back when I had the links to block domains I blocked a dozen or so.

Well, I'm visiting sites and the block option still isn't showing up for them. Maybe I need to reload google a few more times or something. I can tell from the preview if I want to block many sites, just like I can tell from the subject that many emails are spam. If they're going to let me mark email as spam without reading it I should be able to mark a domain as spam without visiting it.

If I use an extension, I can get the appropriate behavior. I was using the extension, but I stopped because google added in the functionality. Looks like it's time to go back to it because google crippled their version of it.

Seeing as how 20% of the labor force has been replaced by machines, what are these people supposed to do to support themselves? They can't all be criminals...

This story is about a type of make-work employment too, it's just not funded by the government. It's not so different than organized crime, in that no true value is created for the economy by the actions of the parties involved.

If the government made money (instead of the banks), they could spend it into circulation to employ people who do valuable thi

The problem seems to be that the police think it's OK to keep and publish your photo, and associate it with a particular crime, even when you are innocent. I don't see why it would be a good thing to put this kind of data in the public record.

I don't have a problem with anonymised arrest stats being part of the public record, I agree that this is necessary. Where I have a problem is publishing the name-photo-crime link. I believe in openness of pubic data where it relates to public money, public resources, and people who are public figures, and I also believe in data protection for the identities and what I consider the private data of 'private' individuals. I think that just because the state collects data, it does not necessarily own it. I

..., because arrests are public record, an outside party can look at the records and see that the [insert minority here] population, which is 10% of the whole population makes up 90% of the arrests. What does that sound like to you?

There are lots of types of records which *should* be public. But, I think most folks agree that not *everything* should be public. Health records shouldn't be public (or, in the case of government health insurance programs, like Medicare/Medicaid, records of doctors bills with detailed information about what types of tests, medicines, and procedures the doctor billed for, which would allow someone to more or less reconstruct a patient's health history), tax records (at least while the individual is still al